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Problems with the Conspiratist World View

The conspiratist world view—the belief that a unified cabal of elitists is manipulating world events, mind controlling the population,that the main stream media is nothing but lies and that we already live in a police state and a New World Order, etc. has become ubiquitous in global culture. It is the premise of so many Facebook posts, viral memes, websites, radio shows and movies. It transcends red and blue and is as likely to be heard amongst the far right and the far left. It is a perspective widely held in Europe, Central and South America, the Arab world, Australia, New Zealand and almost any place you can think of. Typically, the purveyors of this point of view think they are daring revolutionaries waking up the sheeple, etc. and don’t seem to notice that they are actually just one more of a vast and growing multitude who hold this perspective. Many of these people are close friends of mine. My challenge to them is to listen to this talk and consider whether this worldview actually represents an awakening rather than a distorted perspective riddled with problematic assumptions and reality testing issues.

The “history is shaped by inexorable, inevitable unseen forces” rather than actual people with names and addresses has intellectual foundation that doesn’t ultimately involve PR funding from actual people?

urza9814

Nobody I know actually believes this as stated — specifically, nobody believes it’s some vast global conspiracy. It’s just a powerful elite using that power to look after their own interests at the expense of everyone else. It’s an ad-hoc conspiracy if you like, but not entirely an explicit one.

echar

Thanks for sharing Juan.

aliasooze

They own the banks, food, water, corporations and money. They can sieze anything from you up to and including your life. They are moving towards a one world Governent, One World Religion, one world “peacekeepers”. They are poisoning the food air water and soil…

Naw there’s no conspiracy here. Move along.

Go to You Tube and look up Nigel Farage. See how the European union is working out. They want to do that for North America, Asia and Africa.

Do you know who is writing the laws in the US? It isn’t elected officials. Look up ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Counsil. They write laws they wine and dine politicians to take them back to the states to pass them. Ever notice how they try to pass the same laws in all 50 states at the state level?

Look up agenda 21. There is definately a conspiracy defined as:

1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.

2. A group of conspirators.

3. Law An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.

4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design

Juan

I don’t think anyone is suggesting there are no conspiracies. I also think that we can agree that conspiracies are pretty much the way world operates. It seems to me, that the issue here is a question of nuance. Some people see a single, vast global conspiracy, while others see competing spheres of power psychopathically pursuing their respective agendas, with no one group in charge of everything.
I tend to lean more towards the second model, because it seems to line up a bit better with how I see the world functioning, for now.
The other thing, that I think is key, is how so many people seem to get almost possessed by the conspiracy belief system, as if it were a kind of fundamentalism. It has become a kind of religion in its own right.

aliasooze

It’s not a religion. That’s laughable that you would say that. It’s a way to discredit what I said above, just like conspiracy therorist.

Let me give you some more examples.

Bank bail outs…we borrowed the money from the Fed to loan to banks all over the world. Why? We are paying interest on that money and so will the next generations. Children born today are born with 56.000 dollars in debt.

Then there is the UN, TPP, NSA, Obamacare, the UN’s small arms treaty, Fukushima and NGO’s. There’s lobbyists, and money sent to other countries that we also borrow.
Everybody has an agenda and if you aren’t seeing the connections by now, I feel sorry for you.
Look at Europe…country after country is being taken over when they default on their debt by the European union. Do you realize what that means?

aliasooze

I replied and it’s awaiting moderation. Since you published this maybe you can get the reply released. I’m out. I don’t stay in places that moderate. Have a nice evening. Peace, Love and Molon Labe.

echar

Disqus has a random spam filter. This is to keep from the annoying my relative made this ammount of money, go to this site posts. Sometimes it selects posts for whatever reason, typically because of a link. It’s waiting for the Mod to release it.

While I don’t endorse the simplistic world view of Mr. aliasooze, “They” are the elite class of the emerging global economy, given a breezy if incomplete overview in (former Kissinger and Associates managing director) David Rothkopf’s book ‘Superclass.’ There was a relatively recent Swiss study that also describes the economic concentration and interlocking corporate directorships that are coalescing to form the ad hoc global system:http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/10/24/super-entity-147-global-economy-swiss-researchers_n_1028690.html

echar

Thank you.

echar

But don’t grab a pitchfork and head to the nearest Occupy protest just
yet. Systems researchers say this isn’t the result of an Illuminati-type
global conspiracy, but rather a natural force to be expected.

The uber rich, ensuring that their riches keeps flowing. Reality may not be as colorful as fantasy, but it sure beats frothing at the bit over pearlescent fears.

gustave courbet

Excellent point. One of the areas of research that I am particularly interested in, and that arch conspiracy theorists would benefit enormously from studying, is complexity science, or the study of how complex systems coalesce out of chaos. The idea that there are rules embedded in the substrate of reality that countervail entropy is still fairly obscure but I think it will be hugely influential in the century to come (in biology, chemistry, physics, economics, computer science, and general philosophy). As an addition to your above comment, I would remind anyone who thinks the NWO has god-like command over world events, that the people at the top of the pyramid are still people, trapped in their limited belief systems and hobbled by their ignorance of the complexity of the reality that surrounds them. They make mistakes based on assumptions and limited information, just like the rest of us. But to argue that the people at the top don’t exert massive, if subtle influence, is the most dangerous kind of naivety.

echar

complexity science, or the study of how complex systems coalesce out of chaos. The idea that there are rules embedded in the substrate of reality that countervail entropy is still fairly obscure

I understand this, yet I don’t understand it at the same time. My mind wanders to the relationship between those on top and those on the bottom in nature.

That being, those on top have the power and those below want to seize it. Eventually those on top get complacent, and those below take the top.

This seems to me, to be a somewhat disfunctional or lopsided circumambulation. Akin to an egg rolling. Perhaps more like a flawed Weeble Wobble.

Juan

“The idea that there are rules embedded in the substrate of reality that countervail entropy is still fairly obscure but I think it will be hugely influential in the century to come (in biology, chemistry, physics, economics, computer science, and general philosophy).” This is a very interesting idea. Lately I’ve been fascinated by the holographic univers concept. I will not even pretend to understand the physics behind it, as I am not a scientist, but I am intrigued by the idea just the same. If I understand the model correctly, it seems that there is an underlying or fundamental something (substrate) from which our reality arises. Some people call it the zero point field, quantum state or vacuum state. Is this zero point field essentially the same thing as the substrate you are referring to?

jnana

The Zero Point Field that is called the Zero Point Field is not the Zero Point Field

Juan

Indeed, just like the Tao that can be named is not the Tao.
I just heard Jacque Vallee suggest that “our universe is a subset of something else.”
Taoists, Vedantists, and other ancient traditions have been saying something very similar for thousands of years.

Andrew

Perhaps global conspiracies are a natural force to be expected.

echar

Perhaps, but can they be unhealthy?

jasonpaulhayes

You found a few conservative talking points standing in the piss of youtube researchers and google scholars.

Rhoid Rager

I have thought google scholar as an outstanding research tool since I first started using it in 2007.

http://KREET-N.BLOGSPOT.COM/ KREET-N

ITS JUST POOR PEOPLE.
POOR PEOPLE WHO ARE FANTASIZING ABOUT BEING RICH.
TO ANYONE FROM A SMALL TOWN IN ARKANSAS… ANY CLOSED DOOR MEETING OF RICH PEOPLE THAT SELL ANYTHING TO POOR PEOPLE IS OBVIOUSLY A CONSPIRACY. AND IT IS. THE WAR IS A CLASS WAR. DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THEY CALL THEMSELVES. EXXON DISNEY AD NAUSEUM. CLEARLY THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW. OPENLY AND WANTONLY SO. WE ARE GOVERNED BY PEOPLE WHO ASSUME THAT MINIMUM WAGE IS ENOUGH TO LIVE ON. GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY WALMART PAYS A CEO-1000-1 WHAT IT PAYS AN HOURLY WORKER. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA SAY? AYN RAND? BLAH. THESE PEOPLE ARE GREEDY AS HELL AND THEY TAKE ALL THE CREDIT TO BOOT. THIS AINT ABOUT BLACK AND WHITE IT’S ABOUT RICH AND POOR. FUCK YOU FOR ATTEMPTING TO MARGINALIZE MY BELIEFS. CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ARE PROOF OF GOVERNMENT OBFUSCATION IN AND OF THEMSELVES. THE VERY FACT THAT THINGS ARE DEEMED CLASSIFIED SHOULD ANNOY YOU TO NO END…BUT NO! YOU TRUST THEM? I CAN’T TRUST ANYBODY ANYMORE. YOU PEOPLE HAVE FUCKED PEOPLE UP.
DAMN MAN. THE FACT THAT LIFE SUCKS IS PROOF OF NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF MANAGEMENT…LIFE SUCKS DOOOOD IT’S NOT COOL ANYMORE. NOTHING IS FUNNY..HAHA. NOTHING. WE’RE BEING FUCKED EVERY WHICH WAY AND AS SOON AS PEOPLE START TALKING ABOUT SECRET MEETINGS AND CONSPIRACIES,,,PEOPLE LIKE YOU START WRITING TOO. HOW MUCH MONEY YOU GOT?
CAN YOU LEND ME SOME MONEY?

Juan

Wtf? Who are you yelling at?

http://KREET-N.BLOGSPOT.COM/ KREET-N

you i think

echar

I humbly request that you watch this and listen to the words of Robert Anton Wilson, a self confessed cosmic schmuck.

For those that do not think there is an effert to subvert the Gov. have you ever heard of the original 13th amendment or TONA?

Titles Of Nobility Act

If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain, any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them

Lincoln didn’t care about the slaves. Here’s a quote:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…”

He was a lawyer though and BAR as in bar association means British accreditation registry.

aliasooze

Another intesresting thing about the civil war. Britain and France, our good allies, were waiting to devour the corpse of the US. Russia actually brought boats to the east and west coast to prevent that from happening.

Juan

Dude, are you one of those people who shout stuff like, “I did not contract with you.”or “I am a natural person over which you have no jurisdiction.” as you’re getting hauled off in handcuffs for tax evasion or squatting? They think they have found some legal loophole of some kind that exempts them from the law. Of course, this only gets them in trouble all the time. I cannot remember what they are called.

Rhoid Rager

In Canada they’re called Freemen on the Land. There are other names and differing legal approaches (for example, some refer to Admiralty Law as trumping the law of countries) around the world. I don’t have problems with people that want to claim all that, since they might be waking others up to the hypocritical nature of ALL law; but they can’t get away from the fact that they’re essentially drinking more poison to cure the poison they’ve already drank.

echar

Fantastic analogy. Is that like cut off their nose to spite their face?

Rhoid Rager

I think that my analogy describes the ‘logic’ of their strategy, while your analogy describes the outcome.

Eric_D_Read

Sovereign Citizens.

Juan

Ah yes, Sovereign Citizens. Thanks.

http://KREET-N.BLOGSPOT.COM/ KREET-N

conSpiratist is not spelled conpiratist… is conspiratist even a word?
it doesn’t appear to actually be a word.

smendler

A “theory” has to be testable, right? They’re also supposed to be predictive. “Conspiracy theories” are generally neither. For this reason I prefer to call then “conspiracy narratives…”

Rhoid Rager

Actually, if we want to examine that word epistemologically, then a theory is a coherent body of thought that contains certain (explicit) assumptions about observable phenomena. Hypotheses are what are to be made testable (or, more accurately, falsifiable). Prediction, Hume noted, is the paradoxical element of human knowledge, since it only takes one black swan to disqualify our hypothesis that all swans are white. Thus, this yields all human knowledge as uncertain. This is both a tragic and fascinating aspect of our reality.

gustave courbet

Gore Vidal distinguished the difference by pointing out that he was not a conspiracy theorist but a conspiracy researcher. I would add that some subjects held by the ill-informed to be conspiracy theories have copious amounts of academic research and other data to confirm them, for instance the long running connection between American intelligence agencies and the drug trade.

heinrich6666

This is conflating all the different types of theory possible with one type — the theory of the physical scientist in a laboratory setting. Is a historical theory predictive? How could it be when events happened in the past? Many so-called conspiracy theories are just historical theories that suppose levels of criminality by state actors that are still considered taboo/unthinkable.

smendler

Also, most conspiracy narratives aren’t actionable – they don’t tell you what you should *do* (beyond, of course, getting other people to believe the narrative)….

Rhoid Rager

That’s because prescriptions stink as much as conspiracies do. Appealing to the thinking person implies that the listener considers carefully what they ought to do, as opposed to what others think they ought to do.

heinrich6666

I have a theory that a certain country called ‘China’ exists. There’s all sorts of hearsay evidence, as well as physical evidence consisting of photographs of purported Chinese people (note the eyes), monuments and the like — even restaurants calling themselves ‘Chinese’ with a semi-distinctive food. But according to you, this theory fails because it isn’t actionable.

smendler

I have heard it suggested that conspiracy theories are just a plot to keep people from thinking about what’s really going on – in their humdrum everyday lives, that is

Holy shit,that was bizarre bit of pop flotsam. I forget sometimes that stuff is out there.

Calypso_1

I was somewhat dubious in accepting certain alt-right trendologists that nazi/hitler chic was in…..
i can scarcely think of more appalling test markets.

Rhoid Rager

It seems to me that vehemently denying conspiracies is as much a dishonest effort as passionately affirming them.

BrianApocalypse

That might be true, but the guy in the video posted here is certainly not guilty of that. He seems extremely reasonable.

Rhoid Rager

I admit that I wrote what I did after listening to only 17 minutes in. But that’s the impression that I developed up to there. Maybe he somehow redeemed himself afterwards…

Craig Bickford

Institutional belief systems and ego attachments are the root of the problem, and guys like Kreet-in who want to pacify your sense that something is wrong. Maybe it isn’t a world spanning conspiracy, but it is there behind the scenes as it has been for centuries manipulating your life, and pretending it isnt’ there is exactly the level of apathy that this article strives to bring out in everyone.

Juan

I am very intentionally entertaining the ideas and implications of this rap as a way to fuck with that part of my belief system. Was feeling stuck and stale there in conspiracy land. Thought maybe I’d go have a look around outside for a bit.

thisbliss

I hear ya, sometimes you can burnout by ingesting all this info. There is too many loose ends and what ifs being proposed by your internal dialogue that you reach a very dissonant place. At that point I usually just say to hell with the whole thing and bury my head in the sand – try to reconnect with what matters most in the here and now for lets face it all these things are completely abstract. Then I pick up where I left off on Monday morning with the next wacky conspiracy har har

echar

Something a friend told me a long time ago has stuck with me. If anyhting should cause alarm, such as a strange noise at night; grab a flashlight and go look. If nothing is there, then you know.

heinrich6666

I sometimes wonder what the stance is of a website called Disinfo.com when it is frequently ‘anti-‘ conspiracy, featuring stories like these… I have no trouble accepting that a theory, when it is maintained for pathological reasons, is not a theory at all. So monomaniacal obsessions with the Illuminati — in the absence of evidence — are not ‘theories’, but really modes of relating to the world taken on for strong psychological reasons. But likewise the same is true with conventional wisdom: one refuses to believe anything strange happened with WTC 7 for equally pathological reasons. The best so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ are not pathological at all: they are just historical theories that fly in the face of State power. They do not hold the conspirators to be all-powerful. For example, the JFK coup appears to have been done to force an invasion of Cuba and/or a confrontation of the Soviets — thus, a sheep-dipped ‘Communist’ like Oswald was used. But LBJ and Hoover shut that angle down. So were the conspirators all-powerful? No. Likewise, the collapse of WTC 7 several hours after any plane impacts was similarly a mistake: it served no purpose, did not advance the narrative, and could only have suggested something fishy was going on with 9/11. Yet it happened, and was perhaps a mistake. So here again: the criminals behind it are not all-powerful gods who give order to our world.

Juan

I totally agree. Though, the above piece is not anti-conspiracy, nor am I. I cannot speak for Disinfo, but they do not seem at all anti-conspiracy to me.
Part of the reason I submitted this piece was because I thought I needed a little perspective on my own belief systems viz conspiracy.
Also, I do not necessarily agree with everything Mr. Zap has to say, though I do find his work interesting.

Joe Boyer

This is so overgeneralized. There is not *one* conspiratorial world view which believes *every* theory out there. And to say that it is widely held “almost any place you can think of” is a bit of a stretch, to say the least.

heinrich6666

It’s funny that this ZapOracle appeals to the concept of ‘reality testing’, but pooh-poohs appeals to the physical anomaly of a WTC collapsing the way it did. In other words, it doesn’t ‘test’ reality, but just assumes certain things to be impossible in advance.

Joe Boyer

Yes, and there is a mountain of reality tested evidence, in the history of high rise fires alone, to suggest proponents of the official State stance are more reliant on pathological tendencies than those “conspiratists” demonized here.

echar

I apreciate that Zap noted the common multidirectional tendency of “conspiratist” belief. Also known as Strange Loops. I see the value in placing a damper on such cloth. Pick too many threads and one may find themselves threadbare.

BrianApocalypse

The obsessive, belief-system qualities you alluded to are exactly what this video is about. Disinfo has never had an agenda in the way that a site like Infowars has, it’s always been about presenting multiple perspectives on reality, some of which seem to conflict. There is no “stance” as such, simply curiosity.

I don’t know if you watched the whole video, but the speaker stated that he doesn’t dismiss conspiracy theories outright like some dyed in the wool skeptic. It’s more about the psychology of a particular belief system.

Juan

Thanks, you said it better than I did:)

http://KREET-N.BLOGSPOT.COM/ KREET-N

i dont think the assumption was that they were all powerful…just rich as fuck.

Andrew

What if we reject their definition of “wealth?”

http://KREET-N.BLOGSPOT.COM/ KREET-N

i still gotta eat somehow

Andrew

Too true.

jasonpaulhayes

Typo in the Title…

ajsilver

this is bullshit; anyone who listens to alex jones, michael tsarion, david icke, coast-to-coast, loose change, deserves a distorted view of reality, or of conspiracy research.

OK, I took up your challenge and I conclude that I have been right all along. A few powerful people hold disproportionate power and benefit by concealment.

gustave courbet

As someone who has been called a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ I found this talk to be a refreshing reproach to the simplistic dogmatism that often masquerades as legitimate anti-establishment worldview. And while I disagree with numerous points made, I found his essential thesis to be worth consideration namely because it demands true skeptical introspection about one’s beliefs, which is a trait sorely lacking in our culture. I would add that it resonates with an idea that I’ve lately found to be particularly important to bear in mind: Belief systems are a tool that humans use for simplifying an otherwise incomprehensibly complex reality down to a level they can ‘understand.’

Tony Peart

Problem is that the believers of the conspiratorial view is that they are believers , it is a religious belief and no mater what You say irrational belief structures can not be swayed by logic. It will always be ” Turtles All the way down ” . Nice try though.

jnana

my opinion is that there is some arch-conspiracy. but there is ALOT of mis and disinformation to keep us from figuring out what’s really going on. it seems that if there are a multitude of conspiracies surrounding an event(like JFK’s assassination) there is almost definitely some kind of conspiracy that TPTB are keeping a secret by drowning the truth in noise.
the amount of conspiracy theories is almost enough for me to believe there is some kind of arch-conspiracy

Andrew

> I sometimes wonder what the stance is of a website called Disinfo.com when it is frequently ‘anti-‘ conspiracy, featuring stories like these…

The problem is that you’re using “stance” in the singular.

heinrich6666

Oh. Should I be using ‘website’ in the plural?

Andrew

No.

heinrich6666

You see, this website (disinfo.com) rather appears to be a news aggregate site. It doesn’t feature written pieces by people with separate points of view you can place according to their authorial names like a Slate or a Salon. It’s more of a news curation site with the names of curators in tiny print whose main role is the *selection* of news stories.

So it’s not wrong to suppose that when a certain type of story gets selected again and again, it’s favored and is generally consistent with the outlook of the site. Moreover, this ‘ZapOracle’ piece is also so brief and so relatively skimpy when it comes to content that it’s not hard to suppose it was selected *because* it is consistent with that outlook and not for any other reason. (Not to mention the page’s goofy design, the article’s many typos, and the questionable choice of using ‘conspiratist’ instead of ‘conspiracist’ for the name of whomever it is attacking.)

I don’t doubt that there are different points of view among the people who contribute to this site. But this is also true of corporations. There might be disagreement among individuals, but when the corporation takes a certain action, the action is more or less irrevocable and is the corporation is accordingly judged. Disinfo has been pretty regularly presenting stories that are ‘anti-conspiracy’ for the past 6-12 months (that I’ve been visiting) alongside other stories that are pro-conspiracy or ‘woo-woo’. It’s curious for a site with that name and general presentation to do so. It’s self-undermining. Not because of a false choice between no conspiracies being true and all of them — but because ‘website’ is singular. Otherwise, this site might as well just be a newsgroup with people posting a lot of random shit.

heinrich6666

Anybody who feels intellectually challenged by the daunting task of reasoning about ‘conspiracies’ ought to just pick up any novel by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Reasoning about conspiracies is, more often than not, just reasoning about criminality, corruption, and deceit. With 9/11, for example, hijackers are said to have had flight manuals, Korans, etc., in their luggage *which they didn’t take with them on the planes* and conveniently left locked in their cars. This is superficially damning evidence until one realizes *it doesn’t make any damn sense*. All it seems to do is conclusively link them to the crime — but it falls apart when you try to place yourself in the hijackers’ shoes and wonder why they brought those things along. Why bring a manual and then not take it on the plane? Why bring a manual when it was for the wrong plane? Can you even really fly using a manual in the first place? Another thing is the hijacker passport miraculously surviving an impact in NYC. Hammett would call that a little too ‘pat’. Likewise, the fuselage of Flight 93 going down a ‘mineshaft’ when questions were raised as to where the hell the plane was.

I agree that conspiracy theories, when dreamt up by crazy people for psychological reasons and not because of evidence, are generally suspect. But this is in a way a straw man: the term ‘conspiracy theory’ is being used as a broad brush. What if I went on a crusade like ZapOracle against ‘scientific theories’ because phrenology was dreamt up by lunatics? What if I decried the ‘scientistic world-view’ supposedly underlying the theories of general relativity, orgone energy, and the theory of humors?

Matt Staggs

Disinfo has been pretty regularly presenting stories that are
‘anti-conspiracy’ for the past 6-12 months (that I’ve been visiting)
alongside other stories that are pro-conspiracy or ‘woo-woo’.-

I think you’re starting to figure it out.

By the way, we publish plenty of original material from many of the same contributors who curate articles from other sites. As a matter of fact, we’ve published several from Juan.

Juan

I hear and obey.

heinrich6666

Starting to figure it out? Har. My view’s the same as it was in the beginning. Disinfo.com may be a news aggregate site (or call it by some other name if you prefer) but sites like these are ambiguous. There’s always a sum total ‘stance’ at any given moment whatever the thoughts of individual contributors. (Fark.com has even got a faux meter on its Politics tab that measures how conservative/liberal it’s skewing based on threads submitted.) The sum total stance might just be an illusion, but it’s a necessary one — otherwise it would just be a newsgroup.

Seeing a link to this kind of webpage (it’s barely an article) raised two concerns for me: 1) ‘conspiracy theories’ are already taboo in the US an other places; and related 2) the webpage itself was pretty weak. For instance, the author at ZapOracle didn’t successfully demonstrate that there is a single ‘worldview’ shared by all so-called ‘conspiratists’. But he did certainly attack that worldview, whatever it is.

Now given that the piece at ZapOracle is weak, and given #1 above, it’s not wrong to be concerned/confused about whether Disinfo.com is in the process of slipping into the bizarre schizoid state of promoting a conspiracy chic (see Kardashians, Tila Tequila) while simultaneously pooh-poohing any truth-value conspiracy theories might have. — It wouldn’t be unthinkable.

That was simply my concern, and it’s as tentative as when I punched in my first lusty word above. Hardly an attack on the site — but I appreciate your attentive response.

Juan

I submitted the piece and Matt saw fit to publish it.
Now, as for my reasoning, it is just that I thought this community would appreciate it. Also, I though it might generate an interesting exchange here in the comments section, which it has:)
I am not going to repeat what I have already stated. Have a look at some of my comments on this thread. It seems to me, they speak for themselves.

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